Man's ingenuity

Mankind can travel into space and cure cancer, so how come so many straightforward minor inventions are useless and annoying? Like these…

Cling film
Used for all manner of household tasks, from covering plates of food to dangerous sex games. That’s if you can find the fucking start of it then somehow peel it back in one piece. Instead it tears halfway, leaving you trying to wrap your sandwich in a two-inch strip which is already sticking to its bloody self. How’s your blood pressure, by the way?

Fray Bentos pies
A meat pie in a tin that keeps it fresh for years. Genius! So long as you have an engineering degree to get into the fucker in the first place. Eventually you prise half the lid open but a load falls on the floor and it’s taken so long you’ve lost your appetite anyway. Which is no bad thing because they taste and smell like shit anyway.

Squeezy mayonnaise bottles
Ideal if you like throwing away half of what you’ve bought because it’s stuck in the bottle. You’ll end up taking the top off and fishing around inside with a butter knife to salvage mayo from all the gunk stuck to the sides. We’ve invented Teflon so surely it’s piss-easy to give it a non-stick lining? Certainly compared to building an atom bomb?

Egg cartons
Eggs are the most delicate thing on the planet, and prone to crack if you just look at them sternly. So what better receptacle then than a flimsy cardboard container with no real ability to prevent crushing by tins of beans and beer bottles? They’re not sealable and cardboard is porous so they’ll also helpfully leak raw egg over your bag of salad.

Waterproof plasters
Waterproof plasters are indeed 100 per cent water resistant – right up to the point of getting wet. After you’ve performed the arduous task of successfully peeling the backing off and applying it while your cut finger drips blood, you can’t face doing it again so can’t wash your hands. Even if you’ve been for a shit. Don’t mention that to anyone.

Disposable barbecues
Easily mankind’s most fucked-up invention ever. They’re so tiny they’re useless unless you’re a very sad bastard having a barbecue for one. Even then you’ve only got a three-minute window between it being fully ablaze and the meagre amount of charcoal fizzling out and going cold. At least the ‘disposable’ bit is dead right. Chuck it straight in the bin and save yourself the hassle of using it.

The Daily Mash

Of course.